Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Make it Rain....

So I'm not particularly well read in the actual nitty-gritty down to the bone aspects about our nations politics. I mean, I understand the gist, I watch the tickers and try and vote with as little guilt as possible. But, when anyone or anything or any website starts trying to break things down into numbers or even worse - logistics - my mind usually cuts ties and runs. But I have been paying some attention to some of the dollar amounts that have been put on the tabel. Dollar amounts tied to things like, oh I don't know, the War, or the stimulus, or the bail-out. You look into the dollar amounts for things for very long and you come across crazy made up numbers like a trillion. That's right, a trillion.

Sure we've all heard this number refrenced before, like there are a trilion stars in the universe, or that meal must have like a trillion calories. But let's get serious for a moment. Nothing, nothing that has ever been counted has been counted to a trillion... because it would take 32 thousand years. I read today that if you spend 1 million dollars everyday since Jesus Christ was born - more that two thousand years ago - you still would not have spent a trillion dollars. A stack of one trillion one dollar bills would stand 68 thousand miles tall or wrap almost three times around the earth. If you took the same one trillion dollars and turned them into pennies it would weigh 340 million tons. Let's put that into perspective, the Empire State Building weighs only 365 thousand tons. Do that many pennies exist? Of course not, there is only about 200 million pennies currently in circulation, with another 100 million retired by the mint, or lost down sewers, drains, toilets, couch cussions etc. Which brings me to another point, there is nearly one million dollars in pennies alone just out there floating around. Insane, so anyways, once you get your one trillion dollars, you can not have it anyway you like. In fact, you can't have it at all - there is only half a trillion dollars currently in circulation.

So I guess my point is coming to something like this; What is the point? How can the powers-that-be even claim these kind of numbers. The cost of the war is over three trillion dollars. But what are these dollars if they aren't in fact dollars? the 700 billion dollar federal bailout is more than the actual amount of money in circulation. What if all these people that actually get the bail out - you know the people who are already rich and just don't want to lose the title to their one hundred thousand dollar Mercedes S class sedans - decided to cash their checks. I think this is how black holes are created.